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By IRVIN S. COBB 



Novels 

OLD JUDGE PRIEST 

BACK HOME 

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM 

Wit and Humor 

"SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS—" 
EUROPE REVISED 
ROUGHING IT DE LUXE 
COBB'S ANATOMY 
COBB'S BILL OF FARE 

Miscellany 

paths of glory 

George H. Doran Company 

NEW YORK 



Old Corner Book 
Store, Inc. 




r-'f-i'-- ttmm 



APPARENTLY THERE WAS NOBODY 
AT HOME 



''Speaking of 
Operations—' 

By ^y^ 

Irvin S. Cobb 

Author of 
••Bach Home** •'Europe Revised^** Etc., Etc. 

Illustrations by TONY SARG 



New York 
George H. Dor an Company 



Copyright, 1915, 
By The Curtis Publishing Compant 






Copyright, 1915, 
By George H. Doran Comfant 



/7 ^ ^3 



' 'speaking of Operations — " 



Respectfully Dedicated 
To Two Classes: 

THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY BEEN OPERATED ON 
THOSE WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN OPERATED ON 



^'speaking of Operations — " 



CONTENTS 



Mainly My Own 



' ''Speaking of Operations — ' ' 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Apparently There Was Nobody at Home 

Frontispiece 

PAGE 

He Regarded It as a Suit of Clothes, But I 
Knew Better 22 

In Which I Assumed All Responsibility for 
What Was to Take Place ... 36 

I Wished to Show How Utterly Indifferent 
I Was - • - - - - ^50 



' 'Speaking of Operations— ' ' 



Now that the last belated bill for ser- 
vices professionally rendered has 
been properly paid and properly 
receipted; now that the memory of the 
event, like the mark of the stitches, has 
faded out from a vivid red to a becoming 
pink shade; now that I pass a display of 
adhesive tape in a drug-store window with- 
out flinching — I sit me down to write a 
little piece about a certain matter — a small 
thing, but mine own — to wit. That Opera- 
tion. 

For years I have noticed that persons 
who underwent pruning or remodeling at 
the hands of a duly qualified surgeon, and 
survived, like to talk about it afterward. 
In the event of their not surviving I have 
no doubt they still liked to talk about it, 
but in a different locality. Of all the 
readily available topics for use, whether 
among friends or among strangers, an op- 
eration seems to be the handiest and most 
dependable. It beats the Tariff, or Roose- 
velt, or Bryan, or when this war is going 
to end, if ever, if you are a man talking to 

[11] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

other men; and it is more exciting even 
than the question of how Mrs. Vernon 
Castle will wear her hair this season, if 
you are a woman talking to other women. 
For mixed companies a whale is one of 
the best and the easiest things to talk about 
that I know of. In regard to whales and 
their peculiarities you can make almost any 
assertion without fear of successful contra- 
diction. Nobody ever knows any more 
about them than you do. You are not 
hampered by facts. If someone mentions 
the blubber of the whale and you chime 
in and say it may be noticed for miles on 
a still day when the large but emotional 
creature has been moved to tears by some 
great sorrow coming into its life, every- 
body is bound to accept the statement. For 
after all how few among us really know 
whether a distressed whale sobs aloud or 
does so under its breath? Who, with any 
certainty, can tell whether a mother whale 
hatches her own egg her own self or leaves 
it on the sheltered bosom of a fjord to be 
incubated by the gentle warmth of the mid- 
night sun? The possibilities of the propo- 
[12] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

sition for purposes of informal debate, pro 
and con, are apparent at a glance. 

The weather, of course, helps out amaz- 
ingly when you are meeting people for 
the first time, because there is nearly al- 
ways more or less weather going on some- 
where and practically everybody has ideas 
about it. The human breakfast is also a 
wonderfully good topic to start up during 
one of those lulls. Try it yourself the next 
time the conversation seems to drag. Just 
speak up in an offhand kind of way and 
say that you never care much about break- 
fast — a slice of toast and a cup of weak tea 
start you off properly for doing a hard day's 
work. You will be surprised to note how 
things liven up and how eagerly all present 
join in. The lady on your left feels that 
you should know she always takes two 
lumps of sugar and nearly half cream, be- 
cause she simply cannot abide hot milk, no 
matter what the doctors say. The gentle- 
man on your right will be moved to con- 
fess he likes his eggs boiled for exactly 
three minutes, no more and no less. Buck- 
wheat cakes and sausage find a champion 

[13] 



^'Speaking of Operations — " 

and oatmeal rarely lacks a warm defender. 

But after all, when all is said and done, 
the king of all topics is operations. Sooner 
or later, wherever two or more are gath- 
ered together it is reasonably certain that 
somebody will bring up an operation. 

Until I passed through the experience of 
being operated on myself, I never really 
realized what a precious conversational 
boon the subject is, and how great a part 
it plays in our intercourse with our fellow 
beings on this planet. To the teller it is 
enormously interesting, for he is not only 
the hero of the tale but the rest of the cast 
and the stage setting as well — the whole 
show, as they say; and if the listener has 
had a similar experience — and who is there 
among us in these days that has not taken 
a nap 'neath the shade of the old ether 
cone? — it acquires a doubled value. 

"Speaking of operations " you say, 

just like that, even though nobody present 
has spoken of them; and then you are off, 
with your new acquaintance sitting on the 
edge of his chair, or hers as the case may 
be and so frequently is, with hands clutched 
[14] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

in polite but painful restraint, gills work- 
ing up and down with impatience, eyes 
brightened with desire, tongue hung in the 
middle, waiting for you to pause to catch 
your breath, so that he or she may break 
in with a few personal recollections along 
the same line. From a mere conversation 
it resolves itself into a symptom symposium, 
and a perfectly splendid time is had by 
all. 

If an operation is such a good thing to 
talk about, why isn't it a good thing to write 
about, too? That is what I wish to know. 
Besides, I need the money. Verily, one al- 
ways needs the money when one has but 
recently escaped from the ministering 
clutches of the modern hospital. There- 
fore I write. 

It all dates back to the fair, bright morn- 
ing when I went to call on a prominent 
practitioner here in New York, whom I 
shall denominate as Doctor X. I had a 
pain. I had had it for days. It was not 
a dependable, locatable pain, such as a 
tummyache or a toothache is, which you 
can put your hand on; but an indefinite, 

[15] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

unsettled, undecided kind of pain, which 
went wandering about from place to place 
inside of me like a strange ghost lost in 
Cudjo's Cave. I never knew until then 
what the personal sensations of a haunted 
house are. If only the measly thing could 
have made up its mind to settle down some- 
where and start light housekeeping I think 
I should have been better satisfied. I never 
had such an uneasy tenant. Alongside of 
it a woman with the moving fever would 
be comparatively a fixed and stationary 
object. 

Having always, therefore, enjoyed per- 
fectly riotoi^ and absolutely unbridled 
health, never feeling weak and distressed 
unless dinner happened to be ten or fifteen 
minutes late, I was green regarding phy- 
sicians and the ways of physicians. But I 
knew Doctor X slightly, having met him 
last summer in one of his hours of ease in 
the grand stand at a ball game, when he 
was expressing a desire to cut the umpire's 
throat from ear to ear, free of charge ; and 
I remembered his name, and remembered, 
too, that he had impressed me at the Xxmt 
[16] 



^'Speaking of Operations — " 

as being a person of character and decision 
and scholarly attainments. 

He wore whiskers. Somehow in my 
mind whiskers are ever associated with 
medical skill. I presume this is a heritage 
of my youth, though I believe others labor 
under the same impression. As I look back 
it seems to me that in childhood's days all 
the doctors in our town wore whiskers. 

I recall one old doctor down there in 
Kentucky who was practically lurking in 
ambush all the time. All he needed was 
a few decoys out in front of him and a 
pump gun to be a duck blind. He carried 
his calomel about with him in a fruit jar, 
and when there was a cutting job he 
stropped his scalpel on his bootleg. 

You see, in those primitive times germs 
had not been invented yet, and so he did 
not have to take any steps to avoid them. 
Now we know that loose, luxuriant whisk- 
ers are unsanitary, because they make such 
fine winter quarters for germs; so, though 
the doctors still wear whiskers, they do not 
wear them wild and waving. In the pro- 
fession bosky whiskers are taboo; they must 

[17] 



^^ speaking of Operations — " 

be laadscaped. And since it is a recognized 
fact that germs abhor orderliness and 
straight lines they now go elsewhere to re- 
side, and the doctor may still retain his 
traditional aspect and yet be practically 
germproof. Doctor X was trimmed in ac- 
cordance with the ethics of the newer 
school. He had trellis whiskers. So I 
went to see him at his offices in a fashion- 
able district, on an expensive side street. 

Before reaching him I passed through 
the hands of a maid and a nurse, each of 
whom spoke to me in a low, sorrowful tone 
of voice, which seemed to indicate that 
there was very little hope. 

I reached an inner room where Doctor 
X was. He looked me over, while I de- 
scribed for him as best I could what seemed 
to be the matter with me, and asked me a 
number of intimate questions touching on 
the lives, works, characters and peculiari- 
ties of my ancestors; after which he made 
me stand up in front of him and take my 
coat off, and he punched me hither and 
yon with his forefiiiger. He also knocked 
repeatedly on my breastbone with his 
[18] 



^'Speaking of Operations — " 

knuckles, and each time, on doing this, 
would apply his ear to my chest and listen 
intently for a spell, afterward shaking his 
head in a disappointed way. Apparently 
there was nobody at home. For quite a 
time he kept on knocking, but without get- 
ting any response. 

He then took my temperature and fifteen 
dollars, and said it was an interesting case 
— not unusual exactly, but interesting — and 
that it called for an operation. 

From the way my heart and other organs 
jumped inside of me at that statement I 
knew at once that, no matter what he may 
have thought, the premises were not unoc- 
cupied. Naturally I inquired how soon 
he meant to operate. Personally I trusted 
there was no hurry about it. I was per- 
fectly willing to wait for several years, if 
necessary. He smiled at my ignorance. 

"I never operate," he said; "operating is 
entirely out of my line. I am a diagnosti- 
cian." 

He was, too — I give him full credit for 
that. He was a good, keen, close diagnosti- 
cian. How did he know I had only fifteen 
[19] 



'' speaking of Operations — -" 

dollars on me? You did not have to tell 
this man what you had, or how much. He 
knew without being told. 

I asked whether he was acquainted with 
Doctor Y — Y being a person whom I had 
met casually at a club to which I belong. 
Oh, yes, he said, he knew Doctor Y. Y 
was a clever man, X said — very, very clever; 
but Y specialized in the eyes, the ears, the 
nose and the throat. I gathered from what 
Doctor X said that any time Doctor Y 
ventured below the thorax he was out of 
bounds and liable to be penalized; and that 
if by any chance he strayed down as far 
as the lungs he would call for help and 
back out as rapidly as possible. 

This was news to me. It would appear 
that these up-to-date practitioners just go 
ahead and divide you up and partition you 
out among themselves without saying any- 
thing to you about it. Your torso belongs 
to one man and your legs are the exclusive 
property of his brother practitioner down 
on the next block, and so on. You may 
belong to as many as- half a dozen special- 
ists, most of whom, very possibly, are total 
[20] 



^^ speaking of Operations — " 

strangers to you, and yet never know a thing 
about it yourself. 

It has rather the air of trespass — nay, 
more than that, it bears some of the aspects 
of unlawful entry — but I suppose it is legal. 
Certainly, judging by what I am able to 
learn, the system is being carried on gener- 
ally. So it must be ethical. 

Anything doctors do in a mass is ethical. 
Almost anything they do singly and on in- 
dividual responsibility is unethical. Being 
ethical among doctors is practically the 
same thing as being a Democrat in Texas 
or a Presbyterian in Scotland. 

"Y will never do for you," said Doctor 
X, when I had rallied somewhat from the 
shock of these disclosures. "I would sug- 
gest that you go to Doctor Z, at such-and- 
such an address. You are exactly in Z's 
line. I'll let him know that you are com- 
ing and when, and I'll send him down my 
diagnosis." 

So that same afternoon, the appointment 
having been made by telephone, I went, full 
of quavery emotions, to Doctor Z's place. 
As soon as I was inside his outer hallway 

[211 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

I realized that I was nearing the presence 
of one highly distinguished in his profes- 
sion. 

A pussy-footed male attendant, in a livery 
that made him look like a cross between 
a headwaiter and an undertaker's assistant, 
escorted me through an anteroom into a 
reception-room, where a considerable num- 
ber of well-dressed men and women were 
sitting about in strained attitudes, pretend- 
ing to read magazines while they waited 
their turns, but in reality furtively watch- 
ing one another. 

I sat down in a convenient chair, adher- 
ing fast to my hat and my umbrella. They 
were the only friends I had there and I 
was determined not to lose them without 
a struggle. On the wall were many colored 
charts showing various portions of the hu- 
man anatomy and what ailed them. Directly 
in front of me was a very thrilling illus- 
tration, evidently copied from an oil paint- 
ing, of a liver in a bad state of repair. I 
said to myself that if I had a liver like 
that one I should keep it hidden from the 
public eye — I would never permit it to sit 

[22] 













HE REGARDED IT AS A SUIT OF CLOTHES 
BUT I KNEW BETTER 



6i 



Speaking of Operations — " 



for its portrait. Still, there is no account- 
ing for tastes. I know a man who got his 
spleen back from the doctors and now keeps 
it in a bottle of alcohol on the what-not in 
the parlor, as one of his most treasured 
possessions, and sometimes shows it to visi- 
tors. He, however, is of a very saving dis- 
position. 

Presently a lady secretary, who sat be- 
hind a roll-top desk in a corner of the room, 
lifted a forefinger and silently beckoned 
me to her side. I moved over and sat down 
by her; she took down my name and my 
age and my weight and my height, and a 
number of other interesting facts that will 
come in very handy should anyone ever be 
moved to write a complete history of my 
early life. In common with Doctor X she 
shared one attribute — she manifested a 
deep curiosity regarding my forefathers — 
wanted to know all about them. I felt that 
this was carrying the thing too far. I felt 
like saying to her: 

"Miss or madam, so far as I know there 
is nothing the matter with my ancestors of 
the second and third generations back, ex- 
[23] 



''Speaking of Operations — " 

cept that they are dead. I am not here 
to seek medical assistance for a grandparent 
who succumbed to disappointment that 
time when Samuel J. Tilden got counted 
out, or for a great-grandparent who entered 
into Eternal Rest very unexpectedly and in 
a manner entirely uncalled for as a result 
of being an innocent bystander in one of 
those feuds that were so popular in my 
native state immediately following the 
Mexican War. Leave my ancestors alone. 
There is no need of your shaking my family 
tree in the belief that a few overripe pa- 
tients will fall out. I alone — I, me, myself 
— am the present candidate!" 

However, I refrained from making this 
protest audibly. I judged she was only go- 
ing according to the ritual; and as she had 
a printed card, with blanks in it ready to 
be filled out with details regarding the re- 
mote members of the family connection, I 
humored her along. 

When I could not remember something 

she wished to know concerning an ancestor 

I supplied her with thrilling details culled 

from the field of fancy. When the card 

[24] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

- V " 

was entirely filled up she sent me back to 
my old place to wait I waited and waited, 
breeding fresh ailments all the time. I 
had started out with one symptom ; now if 
I had one I had a million and a half. I 
could feel goose flesh sprouting out all over 
me. If I had been taller I might have 
had more, but not otherwise. Such is the 
power of the human imagination when the 
surroundings are favorable to its develop- 
ment. 

Time passed; to me it appeared that 
nearly all the time there was passed and 
that we were getting along toward the 
shank-end of the Christian era mighty fast. 
I was afraid my turn would come next 
and afraid it would not. Perhaps you know 
this sensation. You get it at the dentist's, 
and when you are on the list of after-dinner 
speakers at a large banquet, and when you 
are waiting for the father of the Only Girl 
in the World to make up his mind whether 
he is willing to try to endure you as a son- 
in-law. 

Then some more time passed. 

One by one my companions, obeying a 

125] 



'^speaking of Operations — " 

command, passed out through the door at 
the back, vanishing out of my life forever. 
None of them returned. I was vaguely 
wondering whether Doctor Z buried his 
dead on the premises or had them removed 
by a secret passageway in the rear, when 
a young woman in a nurse's costume tapped 
me on the shoulder from behind. 

I jumped. She hid a compassionate 
smile with her hand and told me that the 
doctor would see me now. 

As I rose to follow her — still clinging 
with the drowning man's grip of despera- 
tion to my hat and my umbrella — I was 
astonished to note by a glance at the cal- 
endar on the wall that this was still the 
present date. I thought it would be Thurs- 
day of next week at the very least. 

Doctor Z also wore whiskers, carefully 
pointed up by an expert hedge trimmer. 
He sat at his desk, surrounded by freewill 
offerings from grateful patients and by 
glass cases containing other things he had 
taken away from them when they were not 
in a condition to object. I had expected, 
after all the preliminary ceremonies and 

[26] 



^^ speaking of Operations — " 

delays, that we should have a long seance 
together. Not so; not at all. The modem 
expert in surgery charges as much for re- 
membering your name between visits as the 
family doctor used to expect for staying 
up all night with you, but he daes not 
waste any time when you are in his pres- 
ence. 

I was about to find that out. And a little 
later on I was to find out a lot of other 
things; in fact, that whole week was of 
immense educational value to me. 

I presume it was because he stood so 
high in his profession, and was almost con- 
stantly engaged in going into the best so- 
ciety that Doctor Z did not appear to be 
the least bit excited over my having picked 
him out to look into me. In the most per- 
functory manner he shook the hand that 
has shaken the hands of Jess Willard, 
George M. Cohan and Henry Ford, and 
bade me be seated in a chair which was 
drawn up in a strong light, where he might 
gaze directly at me as we conversed and 
so get the full values of the composition. 
But if I was a treat for him to look at he 
concealed his feelings very effectually. 

[27] 



'^ speaking of Operations—'^'* 

He certainly had his emotions under 
splendid control. But then, of course, you 
must remember that he probably had 
traveled about extensively and was used to 
sight-seeing. 

From this point on everything passed off 
in a most businesslike manner. He reached 
into a filing cabinet and took out an ex- 
hibit, which I recognized as the same one 
his secretary had filled out in the early 
part of the century. So I was already in 
the card-index class. Then briefly he 
looked over the manifest that Doctor X 
had sent him. It may not have been a 
manifest — it may have been an invoice or 
a bill of lading. Anyhow, I was in the as- 
signee's hands. I could only hope it would 
not eventually become necessary to call in 
a receiver. Then he spoke: 

"Yes, yes-yes," he said; "yes-yes-yes! 
Operation required. Small matter — hum, 
hum! Let's see — this is Tuesday? Quite 
so. Do it Friday! Friday at" — he glanced 
toward a scribbled pad of engagement 
dates at his elbow — "Friday at seven A. M. 
[28] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

No; make it seven-fifteen. Have impor- 
tant tumor case at seven. St. Germicide's 
Hospital. You know the place? — up on 
Umpty-umph Street. Go' day! Miss Who- 
ziz, call next visitor." 

And before I realized that practically 
the whole affair had been settled I was 
outside the consultation-room in a small 
private hall, and the secretary was telling 
me further details would be conveyed to 
me by mail. I went home in a dazed state. 
For the first time I was beginning to learn 
something about an industry in which here- 
tofore I had never been interested. Espe- 
cially was I struck by the difference now re- 
vealed to me in the preliminary stages of 
the surgeons' business as compared with 
their fellow experts in the allied cutting 
trades — tailors, for instance, not to mention 
barbers. Every barber, you know, used to 
be a surgeon, only he spelled it chirurgeon. 
Since then the two professions have drifted 
far apart. Even a half-witted barber — the 
kind who always has the first chair as you 
come into the shop — can easily spend ten 
minutes of your time thinking of things he 

[29] 



''speaking of Operations — '' 

thinks you should have and mentioning 
them to you one by one, whereas any good, 
live surgeon knows what you have almost 
instantly. 

As for the tailor — consider how weari- 
some are his methods when you parallel 
them alongside the tremendous advances 
in this direction made by the surgeon — 
how cumbersome and old-fashioned and 
tedious ! Why, an experienced surgeon has 
you all apart in half the time the tailor 
takes up in deciding whether the vest shall 
fasten with five buttons or six. Our own 
domestic tailors are bad enough in this re- 
gard and the Old World tailors are even 
worse. 

I remember a German tailor in Aix-la- 
Chapelle in the fall of 19 14 who under- 
took to build for me a suit suitable for 
visiting the battle lines informally. He 
was the most literary tailor I ever met any- 
where. He would drape the material over 
my person and then take a piece of chalk 
and write quite a nice long piece on me. 
Then he would rub it out and write it all 
over again, but more fully. He kept this 
[30] 



^'Speaking of Operations — " 

up at intervals of every other day until he 
had writer's cramp. After that he used 
pins. He would pin the seams together, 
uttering little soothing, clucking sounds in 
German whenever a pin went through the 
goods and into me. The German cluck is 
not so soothing as the cluck of the English- 
speaking peoples, I find. 

At the end of two long and trying weeks, 
which wore both of us down noticeably, he 
had the job done. It was not an unquali- 
fied success. He regarded is as a suit of 
clothes, but I knew better; it was a set of 
slip covers, and if only I had been a two- 
seated runabout it would have proved a 
perfect fit, I am sure; but I am a single- 
seated design and it did not answer. I 
wore it to the war because I had nothing 
else to wear that would stamp me as a 
regular war correspondent, except, of 
course, my wrist watch; but I shall not 
wear it to another war. War is terrible 
enough already; and, besides, I have parted 
with it. On my way home through Hol- 
land I gave that suit to a couple of poor 
Belgian refugees, and I presume they are 
still wearing it. 

[311 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

So far as I have been able to observe, 
the surgeons and the tailors of these times 
share but one common instinct: If you go 
to a new surgeon or to a new tailor he 
is morally certain, after looking you over, 
that the last surgeon you had, or the last 
tailor, did not do your cutting properly. 
There, however, is where the resemblance 
ends. The tailor, as I remarked in effect 
just now, wants an hour at least in which 
to decide how he may best cover up and 
disguise the irregularities of the human 
form; in much less time than that the 
surgeon has completely altered the form it- 
self. 

With the surgeon it is very much as it 
is with those learned men who write those 
large, impressive works of reference which 
should be permanently in every library, 
and which we are forever buying from an 
agent because we are so passionately ad- 
dicted to payments. If the thing he seeks 
does not appear in the contents proper he 
knows exactly where to look for it. "See 
appendix," says the historian to you in a 
footnote. "See appendix," says the surgeon 
[321 



^'Speaking of Operations — '' 

to himself, the while humming a cheery 
refrain. And so he does. 

Well, I went home. This was Tuesday 
and the operation was not to be performed 
until the coming Friday. By Wednesday 
I had calmed down considerably. By 
Thursday morning I was practically nor- 
mal again as regards my nerves. You will 
understand that I was still in a state of 
blissful ignorance concerning the actual 
methods of the surgical profession as ex- 
emplified by its leading exponents of to- 
day. The knowledge I have touched on 
in the pages immediately preceding was to 
come to me later. 

Likewise Doctor Z's manner had been 
deceiving. It could not be that he meant 
to carve me to any really noticeable extent 
— his attitude had been entirely too casual. 
At our house carving is a very serious mat- 
ter. Any time I take the head of the table 
and start in to carve it is fitting to remove 
the women and children to a place of safety, 
and onlookers should get under the table. 
When we first began housekeeping and 
gave our first small dinner-party we had 



'^ speaking of Operations'—'^'^ 

2l brace of ducks cooked in honor of the 
company, and I, as host, undertook to carve 
them. I never knew until then that a duck 
vi^as built like a watch — that his works were 
inclosed in a burglarproof case. Without 
the use of dynamite the Red Leary-O'Brien 
gang could not have broken into those 
ducks. I thought so then and I think so 
yet. Years have passed since then, but I 
may state that even now, when there are 
guests for dinner, we do not have ducks. 
Unless somebody else is going to carve, we 
have liver. 

I mention this fact in passing because 
it shows that I had learned to revere carv- 
ing as one of the higher arts, and one not 
to be approached except in a spirit of due 
appreciation of the magnitude of the under- 
taking, and after proper consideration and 
thought and reflection, and all that sort of 
thing. 

If this were true as regards a mere duck, 
why not all the more so as regards the carv- 
ing of a person of whom I am so very fond 
as I am of myself? Thus I reasoned. And 
finally, had not Doctor Z spoken of the 
[34] 



'^speaking of Operations — " 

coming operation as a small matter. Well 
then? 

Thursday at noon I received from Doc- 
tor Z's secretary a note stating that ar- 
rangements had been made for my admis- 
sion into St. Germicide that same evening 
and that I was to spend the night there. 
This hardly seemed necessary. Still, the 
tone of the note appeared to indicate 
that the hospital authorities particularly 
wished to have me for an overnight guest; 
and as I reflected that probably the poor 
things had few enough bright spots in their 
busy lives, I decided I would humor them 
along and gladden the occasion with my 
presence from dinner-time on. 

About eight o'clock I strolled in very 
jauntily. In my mind I had the whole 
programme mapped out. I would stay at 
the hospital for, say, two days following the 
operation — or, at most, three. Then I must 
be up and away. I had a good deal of 
work to do and a number of people to see 
on important business, and I could not 
really afford to waste more than a week- 
end on the staff of St. Germicide's. After 
[35] 



6i 



Speaking of Operations — " 



Monday they must look to their own de- 
vices for social entertainment. That was 
my idea. Now when I look back on it I 
laugh, but it is a hollow laugh and there 
is no real merriment in it. 

Indeed, almost from the moment of my 
entrance little things began to come up that 
were calculated to have a depressing effect 
on one's spirits. Downstairs a serious-look- 
ing lady met me and entered in a book a 
number of salient facts regarding my per- 
sonality which the previous investigators 
had somehow overlooked. There is a lot 
of bookkeeping about an operation. This 
detail attended to, a young man, dressed 
in white garments and wearing an expres- 
sion that stamped him as one who had suf- 
fered a recent deep bereavement came and 
relieved me of my hand bag and escorted 
me upstairs. 

As we passed through the upper corri- 
dors I had my first introduction to the 
hospital smell, which is a smell com- 
pounded of iodoform, ether, gruel, and 
fomething boiling. All hospitals have it, 
[36] 



'■ 




f;-': 



V. 



l\ ■ ■ 













5,1^ *^|C".^\ 



|-"^ 



^-ii^. 



IN WHICH I ASSUMED ALL RESPONSIBILITY 
FOR WHAT WAS TO TAKE PLACE 



^^ speaking of Operations — " 

I understand. In time you get used to it, 
but you never really care for it. 

The young man led me into a small room 
tastefully decorated with four walls, a floor, 
a ceiling, a window sill and a window, a 
door and a doorsill, and a bed and a chair. 
He told me to go to bed. I did not want 
to go to bed — it was not my regular bed- 
time — but he made a point of it, and I 
judged it was according to regulations; so 
I undressed and put on my night clothes 
and crawled in. He left me, taking my 
other clothes and my shoes with him, but 
I was not allowed to get lonely. 

A little later a ward surgeon appeared, 
to put a few inquiries of a pointed and per- 
sonal nature. He particularly desired to 
know what my trouble was. I explained 
to him that I couldn't tell him — he would 
have to see Doctor X or Doctor Z; they 
probably knew, but were keeping it a secret 
between themselves. 

The answer apparently satisfied him, be- 
cause immediately after that he made me 
sign a paper in which I assumed all respon- 
sibility for what was to take place the next 
morning. 

[37] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

This did not seem exactly fair. As I 
pointed out to him, it was the surgeon's 
affair, not mine; and if the surgeon made 
a mistake the joke would be on him and 
not on me, because in that case I would not 
be here anyhow. But I signed, as re- 
quested, on the dotted line, and he de- 
parted. 

After that, at intervals, the chief house 
surgeon dropped in, without knocking, and 
the head nurse came, and an interne or so, 
and a ward nurse, and the special nurse 
who was to have direct charge of me. It 
dawned on me that I was not having any 
more privacy in that hospital than a gold- 
fish. 

About eleven o'clock an orderly came, 
and, without consulting my wishes in the 
matter, he undressed me until I could have 
passed almost anywhere for September 
Morn's father, and gave me a clean shave, 
twice over, on one of my most prominent 
plane surfaces. I must confess I enjoyed 
that part of it. So far as I am able to 
recall, it was the only shave I have ever 
had where the operator did not spray me 
[381 



^'Speaking of Operations — ^'' 

with cheap perfumery afterward and then 
try to sell me a bottle of hair tonic. 

Having shaved me, the young man did 
me up amidships in a neat cloth parcel, 
took his kit under his arm and went away. 

It occurred to me that, considering the 
trivial nature of the case, a good deal of 
fuss was being made over me by persons 
who could have no personal concern in the 
matter whatsoever. This thought recurred 
to me frequently as I lay there, all tied in 
a bundle like a week's washing. I did not 
feel quite so uppish as I had felt. Why 
was everybody picking on me? 

■Anon I slept, but dreamed fitfully. I 
dreamed that a whole flock of surgeons 
came to my bedside and charted me out in 
sections, like one of those diagram pictures 
you see of a beef in the Handy Compen- 
dium of Universal Knowledge, showing 
the various cuts and the butcher's pet name 
for each cut. Each man took his favorite 
joint and carried it away, and when they 
were all gone I was merely a recent site, 
full of reverberating echoes and nothing 
else. 

[39] 



^^ speaking of Operations — " 

I have had happier dreams in my time; 
this was not the kind of dream I should 
have selected had the choice been left to 
me. 

When I woke the young sun was shining 
in at the window, and an orderly — not the 
orderly who had shaved me, but another 
one — was there in my room and my nurse 
was waiting outside the door. The orderly 
dressed me in a quaint suit of pyjamas cut 
on the half shell and buttoning stylishly in 
the back, princesse mode. Then he rolled 
in a flat litter on wheels and stretched me 
on it, and covered me up with a white table- 
cloth, just as though I had been cold Sun- 
day-night supper, and we started for the 
operating-room at the top of the building; 
but before we started I lit a large black 
cigar, as Gen. U. S. Grant used to do when 
he went into battle. I wished by this to 
show how indifferent I was. Maybe he 
fooled somebody, but I do not believe I 
possess the same powers of simulation that 
Grant had. He must have been a very re- 
markable man — Grant must. 

The orderly and the nurse trundled me 
[40] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

out into the hall and loaded me into an 
elevator, which was to carry us up to the 
top of the hospital. Several other nurses 
were already in the elevator. As we came 
aboard one of them remarked that it was a 
fine day. A fine day for what? She did 
not finish the sentence. 

Everybody wore a serious look. Inside 
of myself I felt pretty serious too — serious 
enough for ten or twelve. I had meant to 
fling ojBf several very bright, spontaneous 
quips on the way to the table. I thought 
them out in advance, but now, somehow, 
none of them seemed appropriate. In- 
stinctively, as it were, I felt that humor 
was out of place here. 

I never knew an elevator to progress 
from the third floor of a building to the 
ninth with such celerity as this one on 
which we were traveling progressed. Per- 
sonally I was in no mood for haste. If 
there was anyone else in all that great 
hospital who was in a particular hurry to 
be operated on I was perfectly willing to 
wait. But alas, no ! The mechanism of the 
elevator was in perfect order — entirely too 

[41] 



^^ speaking of Operations — '' 

perfect. No accident of any character what- 
soever befell us en route, no dropping back 
into the basement with a low, grateful 
thud ; no hitch ; no delay of any kind. We 
were certainly out of luck that trip. The 
demon of a joyrider who operated the ac- 
cursed device jerked a lever and up we 
soared at a distressingly high rate of speed. 
If I could have had my way about that 
youth he would have been arrested for 
speeding. 

Now we were there! They rolled me 
into a large room, all white, with a rounded 
ceiling like the inside of an t'g^. Right 
away I knew what the feelings of a poor, 
lonely little yolk are when the spoon begins 
to chip the shell. If I had not been so busy 
feeling sorry for myself I think I might 
have developed quite an active sympathy 
for yolks. 

My impression had been that this was to 
be in the nature of a private affair, with- 
out invitations. I was astonished to note 
that quite a crowd. had assembled for the 
opening exercises. From his attire and 
general deportment I judged that Doctor 
[42] 



' ^speaking of Operations — ' ' 

Z was going to be the master of the revels, 
he being attired appropriately in a white 
domino, with rubber gloves and a fancy cap 
of crash toweling. There were present, 
also, my diagnostic friend, Doctor X, like- 
wise in fancy-dress costume, and a surgeon 
I had never met. From what I could 
gather he was going over the course behind 
Doctor Z to replace the divots. 

And there was an interne in the back- 
ground, playing caddy, as it were, and a 
head nurse, who was going to keep the 
score, and two other nurses, who were go- 
ing to help her keep it. I only hoped that 
they would show no partiality, but be as 
fair to me as they were to Doctor Z, and 
that he would go round in par. 

So they placed me right where my eyes 
might rest on a large wall cabinet full of 
very shiny-looking tools ; and they took my 
cigar away from me and folded my hands 
on the wide bowknot of my sash. Then 
they put a cloth dingus over my face and 
a voice of authority told me to breathe. 
That advice, however, was superfluous and 
might just as well have been omitted, for 

[43] 



''Speaking of Operations — " 

such was my purpose anyhow. Ever since 
I can recall anything at all, breathing has 
been a regular habit with me. So I 
breathed. And, at that, a bottle of highly 
charged sarsaparilla exploded somewhere 
in the immediate vicinity and most of its 
contents went up my nose. 

I started to tell them that somebody had 
been fooling with their ether and adulterat- 
ing it, and that if they thought they could 
send me off to sleep with soda pop they 
were making the mistake of their lives, be- 
cause it just naturally could not be done; 
but for some reason or other I decided to 
put off speaking about the matter for a 
few minutes. I breathed again — again — 
agai 

I was going away from there. I was in 
a large gas balloon, soaring up into the 
clouds. How pleasant! . . . No, by Jove I 
I was not in a balloon — I myself was the 
balloon, which was not quite so pleasant. 
Besides, Doctor Z was going along as a 
passenger; and as we traveled up and up 
he kept jabbing me in the midriff with the 
ferrule of a large umbrella which he had 

[441 



^'speaking of Operations — " 

brought along with him in case of rain. 
He jabbed me harder and harder. I re- 
monstrated with him. I told him I was a bit 
tender in that locality and the ferrule of 
his umbrella was sharp. He would not 
listen. He kept on jabbing me. . . . 

Something broke! We started back down 
to earth. We fell faster and faster. We 
fell nine miles, and after that I began to 
get used to it. Then I saw the earth be- 
neath and it was rising up to meet us. 

A town was below — a town that grew 
larger and larger as we neared it. I could 
make out the bonded indebtedness, and the 
Carnegie Library, and the moving-picture 
palaces, and the new dancing parlor, and 
other principal points of interest. 

At the rate we were falling we were cer- 
tainly going to make an awful splatter in 
that town when we hit. I was sorry for 
the street-cleaning department. 

We fell another half mile or so. A spire 
was sticking up into the sky directly be- 
neath us, like a spear, to impale us. By a 
supreme effort I twisted out of the way of 
that spire, only to strike squarely on top of 

[45] 



''Speaking of Operations — " 

the roof of a greenhouse back of the par- 
sonage, next door. We crashed through it 
with a perfectly terrific clatter of breaking 
glass and landed in a bed of white flowers, 
all soft and downy, like feathers. 

And then Doctor Z stood up and combed 
the debris out of his whiskers and remarked 
that, taking it by and large, it had been one 
of the pleasantest little outings he had en- 
joyed in the entire course of his practice. 
He said that as a patient I was fair, but 
as a balloon I was immense. He asked me 
whether I had seen anything of his um- 
brella and began looking round for it. I 
tried to help him look, but I was too tired 
to exert myself much. I told him I be- 
lieved I would take a little nap. 

I opened a dizzy eye part way. So this 
was heaven — this white expanse that swung 
and swam before my languid gaze? No, 
it could not be — it did not smell like heaven. 
It smelled like a hospital. It was a hospi- 
tal. It was my hospital. My nurse was 
bending over me and I caught a faint whiff 
of the starch in the front of her crisp blue 
blouse. She was two-headed for the mo- 
146] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

ment, but that was a mere detail. She set- 
tled a pillow under my head and told me 
to lie quiet. 

I meant to lie quiet; I did not have to 
be told. I wanted to lie quiet and hurt. 
I was hurty from head to toe and back 
again, and crosswise and eater-cornered. 
I hurt diagonally and lengthwise and on 
the bias. I had a taste in my mouth like 
a bird-and-animal store. And empty! It 
seemed to me those doctors had not left 
anything inside of me except the acoustics. 
Well, there was a mite of consolation there. 
If the overhauling had been as thorough 
as I had reason to believe it was from my 
present sensations, I need never fear catch- 
ing anything again so long as I lived, ex- 
cept possibly dandruff. 

I waved the nurse away. I craved soli- 
tude. I desired only to lie there in that 
bed and hurt — which I did. 

I had said beforehand I meant to stay in 
St. Germicide's for two or three days only. 
It is when I look back on that resolution 
I emit the hollow laugh elsewhere referred 
to. For exactly four weeks I was flat on 
[47] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

my back. I know now how excessively 
wearied a man can gQt of his own back, 
how tired of it, how bored with it! And 
after that another two weeks elapsed before 
my legs became the same dependable pair 
of legs I had known in the past. 

I did not want to eat at first, and when 
I did begin to want to they would not let 
me. If I felt sort of peckish they let me 
suck a little glass thermometer, but there 
is not much nourishment really in thermo- 
meters. And for entertainment, to wile the 
dragging hours away, I could count the 
cracks in the ceiling and read my tempera- 
ture chart, which was a good deal like Red 
Ames' batting average for the past season 
— ranging from ninety-nine to one hundred 
and four. 

Also, through daily conversations with 
my nurse and with the surgeons who 
dropped in from time to time to have a 
look at me, I learned, as I lay there, a great 
deal about the medical profession — that is, 
a great deal for a layman — and what I 
learned filled me with an abiding admira- 
tion for it, both as a science and as a busi- 
[48] 



''^ speaking of Operations — " 

ness. This surely is one profession which 
ever keeps its face to the front. Burying 
its past mistakes and forgetting them as 
speedily as possible, it pushes straight for- 
ward into fresh fields and fresh patients, 
always hopeful of what the future may 
bring in the way of newly discovered and 
highly expensive ailments. As we look 
backward upon the centuries we are as- 
tonished by its advancement. I did a good 
deal of looking backwards upon the cen- 
turies during my sojourn at St. Germi- 
cide's. 

Take the Middle Ages now — the period 
when a barber and a surgeon were one and 
the same. If a man made a failure as a 
barber he turned his talents to surgery. 
Surgeons in those times were a husky breed. 
I judge they worked by the day instead of 
by piecework; anyhow the records show 
they were very fond of experiments, where 
somebody else furnished the raw material. 

When there came a resounding knock at 

the tradesman's entrance of the moated 

grange, the lord of the manor, looking over 

the portcullis and seeing a lusty wight 

[49] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

standing down below, in a leather apron, 
widi his sleeves rolled up and a kit of 
soldering tools under his arm, didn't know 
until he made inquiry whether the gentle 
stranger had come to mend the drain or 
remove the cook's leg. 

A little later along, when gunpowder 
had come into general use as a humanizing 
factor of civilization, surgeons treated a 
gunshot wound by pouring boiling lard 
into it, which I would say was calculated 
to take the victim's mind off his wound and 
give him something else to think about — • 
for the time being, anyhow. I assume the 
notion of applying a mustard plaster out- 
side one's stomach when one has a pain in- 
side one's stomach is based on the same 
principle. 

However, one doesn't have to go clear 
back to medieval times to note the radical 
differences in the plan of treating human 
ailments. A great many persons who are 
still living can remember when the doctors 
were not nearly so numerous as they are 
now. I, for one, v^ould be the last to re- 
verse the sentence and say that because the 
[50 J 




I WISHED TO SHOW 

HOW UTTERLY INDIFFERENT I WAS 



'' speaking of Operations — -" 

doctors were not nearly so numerous then 
as they are now, those persons are still liv- 
ing so numerously. 

In the spring of the year, when the sap 
flowed and the birds mated, the sturdy 
farmer felt that he was due to have some- 
thing the matter with him, too. So he 
would ride into the country-seat and get 
an almanac. Doubtless the reader, if 
country raised, has seen copies of this popu- 
lar work. On the outside cover, which was 
dark blue in color, there was a picture of 
a person whose stomach was sliced four 
ways, like a twenty-cent pie, and then 
folded back neatly, thus exposing his en- 
tire interior arrangements to the gaze of 
the casual observer. However, this party, 
judging by his picture, did not appear to 
be suffering. He did not even seem to fear 
that he might catch cold from standing 
there in his own draught. He was gazing 
off into space in an absent-minded kind of 
way, apparently not aware that anything 
was wrong with him; and on all sides he 
was surrounded by interesting exhibits, such 
as a crab, and a scorpion, and a goat, and a 

[51] 



'^speaking of Operations — " 

chap with a bow and arrow — and one thing 
and another. 

Such was the main design of the cover, 
while the contents were made up of rec- 
ognized and standard varieties in the line 
of jokes and the line of diseases which al- 
ternated, with first a favorite joke and then 
a favorite disease. The author who wrote 
the descriptions of the diseases was one of 
the most convincing writers that ever lived 
anywhere. As a realist he had no superiors 
among those using our language as a 
vehicle for the expression of thought. He 
was a wonder. If a person wasn't particu- 
lar about what ailed him he could read 
any page at random and have one specific 
disease. Or he could read the whole book 
through and have them all, in their most 
advanced stages. Then the only thing that 
could save him was a large dollar bottle. 

Again, in attacks of the breakbone ague 
or malaria it was customary to call in a 
local practitioner, generally an elderly lady 
of the neighborhood, who had none of these 
latter-day prejudices regarding the use of 
tobacco by the gentler sex. One whom I 
[521 



'^speaking of Operations — " 

distantly recall, among childhood's happy 
memories, carried this liberal-mindedness 
to a point where she not only dipped snuff 
and smoked a cob pipe, but sometimes 
chewed a little natural leaf. This lady, on 
being called in, would brew up a large 
caldron of medicinal roots and barks and 
sprouts and things; and then she would 
deluge the interior of the sufferer with a 
large gourdful of this pleasing mixture at 
regular intervals. It was efficacious, too. 
The inundated person either got well or 
else he drowned from the inside. Rocking 
the patient was almost as dangerous a pas- 
time as rocking the boat. This also helps 
to explain, I think, why so many of our 
forebears had floating kidneys. There was 
nothing else for a kidney to do. 

By the time I attained to long trousers, 
people in our town mainly had outgrown 
the unlicensed expert and were depending 
more and more upon the old-fashioned 
family doctor — the one with the whisker- 
jungle — ^who drove about in a gig, accom- 
panied by a haunting aroma of iodoform 
and carrying his calomel with him in bulk. 
[53] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

He probably owned a secret calomel 
mine of his own. He must have; other- 
wise he could never have afforded to be 
so generous with it. He also had other 
medicines with him, all of them being 
selected on the principle that unless a drug 
tasted like the very dickens it couldn't pos- 
sibly do you any good. At all hours of 
the day and night he was to be seen going 
to and fro, distributing nuggets from his 
private lode. He went to bed with his 
trousers and his hat on, I think, and there 
was a general belief that his old mare slept 
between the shafts of the gig, with the 
bridle shoved up on her forehead. 

It has been only a few years since the 
oldtime general practitioner was every- 
where. Just look round and see now how 
the system has changed! If your liver be- 
gins to misconduct itself the first thought 
of the modern operator is to cut it out and 
hide it some place where you can't find 
it. The oldtlmer would have bombarded 
it with a large brunette pill about the size 
and color of a damson plum. Or he might 
put you on a diet of molasses seasoned to 

r54i 



^'Speaking of Operations — " 

taste with blue mass and quinine and other 
attractive condiments. Likewise, in the 
spring of the year he frequently anointed 
the young of the species with a mixture of 
mutton suet and asafetida. This treatment 
had an effect that was distinctly depressing 
upon the growing boy. It militated against 
his popularity. It forced him to seek his 
pleasures outdoors, and a good distance 
outdoors at that. 

It was very hard for a boy, however 
naturally attractive he might be, to retain 
his popularity at the fireside circle when 
coated with mutton suet and asafetida and 
then taken into a warm room. He attracted 
attention which he did not court and which 
was distasteful to him. Keeping quiet did 
not seem to help him any. Even if they 
had been blindfolded others would still 
have felt his presence. A civit-cat suffers 
from the same drawbacks in a social way, 
but the advantage to the civit-cat is that 
as a general thing it associates only with 
other civit-cats. 

Except in the country the old-time, catch- 
as-catch-can general practitioner appears to 

[55] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

be dying out. In the city one finds him oc- 
casionally, playing a limit game in an office 
on a back street — two dollars to come in, 
five to call; but the tendency of the day is 
toward specialists. Hence the expert who 
treats you for just one particular things 
With a pain in your chest, say, you go to 
a chest specialist. So long as he can keep 
the trouble confined to your chest, all well 
and good. If it slips down or slides up 
lie tries to coax it back to the reservation. 
If it refuses to do so, he bids it an affection- 
ate adieu, makes a dotted mark on you to 
show where he left off, collects his bill and 
regretfully turns you over to a stomach 
specialist or a throat specialist, depending 
on the direction in which the trouble was 
headed when last seen. 

Or, perhaps the specialist to whom you 
take your custom is an advocate of an im- 
mediate operation for such cases as yours 
and all others. I may be unduly sensitive 
on account of having recently emerged 
from the surgeon's hands, but it strikes me 
now that there are an awful lot of doctors 
who take one brief glance at a person who 
is complaining, and say to themselves that 
156] 



'^ speaking of Operations — " 

here is something that ought to be looked 
into right away — and immediately open a 
bag and start picking out the proper utensils. 
You go into a doctor's office and tell him 
you do not feel the best in the world — and 
he gives you a look and excuses himself, 
and steps into the next room and begins 
greasing a saw. 

Mind you, in these casual observations 
as compiled by me while bedfast and here 
given utterance, I am not seeking to dis- 
parage possibly the noblest of professions. 
Lately I have owed much to it. I am 
strictly on the doctor's side. He is with us 
when we come into the world and with us 
when we go out of it, oftentimes lending a 
helping hand on both occasions. Anyway, 
our sympathies should especially go out to 
the medical profession at this particular 
time when the anti-vivisectionists are railing 
so loudly against the doctors. The anti- 
vivisection crusade has enlisted widely dif- 
ferent classes in the community, including 
many lovers of our dumb-animal pets — 
and aren't some of them the dumbest things 
you ever saw! — especially chow dogs and 
love birds. 

[571 



'' speaking of Operations- — " 

I will admit there is something to be said 
on both sides of the argument. This dis- 
secting of live subjects may have been 
carried to extremes on occasions. When I 
read in the medical journals that the emin- 
ent Doctor Somebody succeeded in trans- 
ferring the interior department of a peli- 
can to a pointer pup, and vice versa, with 
such success that the pup drowned while 
diving for minnows, and the pelican went 
out in the back yard and barked himself 
to death baying at the moon, I am in- 
terested naturally; but, possibly because of 
my ignorance, I fail to see wherein the 
treatment of infantile paralysis has been 
materially advanced. On the other hand, 
I would rather the kind and gentle Belgian 
hare should be offered up as a sacrifice 
upon the operating table and leave behind 
him a large family of little Belgian heirs 
and heiresses — dependent upon the charity 
of a cruel world — than that I should have 
something painful which can be avoided 
through making him a martyr. I would 
rather any white rabbit on earth should 
have the Asiatic cholera twice than that 
I jhould have it just once. These are my 

[58] 



' ' speaking of Operations — ' ' 

sincere convictions, and I will not attempt 
to disguise them. 

Thanks too, to medical science we know 
about germs and serums and diets and all 
that. Our less fortunate ancestors didn't 
know about them. They were befogged in 
ignorance. As recently as the generation 
immediately preceding ours people were 
unacquainted with the simplest rules of 
hygiene. They didn't care whether the 
housefly wiped his feet before he came into 
the house or not. The gentleman with the 
drooping, cream-separator mustache was 
at perfect liberty to use the common drink- 
\ ing cup on the railroad train. The ap- 
pendix lurked in its snug retreat, undis- 
turbed by the prying fingers of curiosity. 
The fever-bearing skeeter buzzed and 
flitted, stinging where he pleased. The 
germ theory was unfathomed. Suitable 
food for an invalid was anything the in- 
valid could afford to buy. Fresh air, and 
more especially fresh night air, was re^^ 
garded as dangerous, and people hermet- 
ically sealed themselves in before retiring. 
Not daily as at present was the world glad- 
dened by the tidings that science had un- 

159 1 



'' speaking of Operations — " 

earthed some new and particularly unpleas- 
ant disease. It never occurred to a mother 
that she should sterilize the slipper before 
spanking her offspring. Babies were not 
reared antiseptically, but just so. Nobody 
was aware of microbes. 

In short, our sires and our grandsires 
abode in the midst of perils. They were 
surrounded on all sides by things that are 
immediately fatal to the human system. 
Not a single one of them had a right to 
pass his second birthday. In the light of 
what we know, we realize that by now this 
world should be but a barren waste, dotted 
at frequent intervals with large graveyards 
and populated only by a few dispossessed 
and hungry bacteria, hanging over the 
cemetery fence singing: Driven From 
Home! 

In the conditions generally prevalent up 
to twenty-five years ago, most of us never 
had any license, really, to be born at all. 
Yet look how many of us are now here. 
In this age of research I hesitate to attempt 
to account for it, except on the entirely un- 
scientific theory that what you don't know 
doesn't hurt you. Doubtless a physician 
[60] 



'' speaking of Operations — " 

could give you a better explanation, but his 
would cost you more than mine has. 

But we digress. Let us get back to our 
main subject, which is myself. I shall 
never forget my first real meal in that hos- 
pital. There was quite a good deal of talk 
about it beforehand. My nurse kept tell- 
ing me that on the next day the doctor had 
promised I might hare something to eat. 
I could hardly wait. I had visions of a 
tenderloin steak smothered in fried onions, 
and some French-fried potatoes, and a tall 
table-limit stack of wheat cakes, and a few 
other incidental comfits and kickshaws. I 
could hardly wait for that meal. 

The next day came and she brought it 
to me, and I partook thereof. It was the 
white of an ^gg. For dessert I licked a 
stamp; but this I did clandestinely and 
by stealth, without saying anything about 
it to her. I was not supposed to have any 
sweets. 

On the occasion of the next feast the 
diet was varied. I had a sip of one of those 
fermented milk products. You probably 
know the sort of thing I mean. Even be- 
fore you've swallowed it, it tastes as though 

[61] 



'' speaking of Operations — " 

it had already disagreed with you. The 
nurse said this food was predigested but 
did not tell me by whom. Nor did I ask 
her. I started to, but thought better of 
it. Sometimes one is all the happier fof 
not knowing too much. 

A little later on, seeing that I had not 
suffered an attack of indigestion from this 
debauch, they gave me junket. In the dic- 
tionary I have looked up the definitions 
of junket. I quote: 

Junket, v. 1. 1. To entertain by feasting; 
regale. II. i. To give or take part in an 
entertainment or excursion; feast in com- 
pany; picnic; revel. 

Junket, n. A merry feast or excursion; 
picnic. 

When the author of a dictionary tries 
to be frivolous he only succeeds in making 
himself appear foolish. 

I know not how it may be in the world 
at large, but in a hospital, junket is a cus- 
tard that by some subtle process has been 
denuded of those ingredients which make 
a custard fascinating and exciting. It tastes 
as though the eggs, which form its under- 
lying basis, had been laid in a fit of pique 
[62] 



'' speaking of Operations — " 

by a hen that was severely upset at the time. 

Hereafter when the junket is passed 
round somebody else may have my share. 
I'll stick to the mince pie a la mode. 

And the first cigar of my convalescence 
■ — ah, that, too, abides as a vivid memory! 
Dropping in one morning to replace the 
wrappings Doctor Z said I might smoke 
in moderation. So the nurse brought me 
a cigar, and I lit it and took one deep 
puff; but only one. I laid it aside. I said 
to the nurse: 

"A mistake has been made here. I do 
not want a cooking cigar, you understand. 
I desire a cigar for personal use. This one 
is full of herbs and simples, I think. It 
suggests a New England boiled dinner, and 
not a very good New England boiled din- 
ner at that. Let us try again." 

She brought another cigar. It was not 
satisfactory either Then she showed me 
the box — an orthodox box containing cigars 
of a recognized and previously dependable 
brand. I could only conclude that a root- 
and-herb doctor had bought an interest in 
the business and was introducing his own 
pet notions into the formula. 

[63] 



''Speaking of Operations — " 

But came a day — as the fancy writers say 
when they wish to convey the impression 
that a day has come, but hate to do it in 
a commonplace manner — came a day when 
my cigar tasted as a cigar should taste and 
food had the proper relish to it; and my 
appetite came back again and found the 
old home place not so greatly changed 
after all. 

And then shortly thereafter came another 
day, when I, all replete with expensive 
stitches, might drape the customary habili- 
ments of civilization about my attenuated 
frame and go forth to mingle with my fel- 
low beings. I have been mingling pretty 
steadily ever since, for now I have some- 
thing to talk about — a topic good for any 
company; congenial, an absorbing topic. 

I can spot a brother member a block 
away. I hasten up to him and give him 
the grand hailing sign of the order. He 
opens his mouth to speak, but I beat him 
to it. 

"Speaking of operations ^" I say. 

[And then I'm off. 

Believe me, it's the life! 

[64] 

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